Slow

I am learning
   to be
       slow

its weird.

I am learning to

    eat slow
          (can't chow through all this carne)

    speak slow
          in Spanish (can't conjugate my verbs fast enough)
           in English (uthawys ppl cnt indirstend my kiwi eksent)

    move slow
           (lest I leave my hosts behind)

Its not a bad thing
its just different

All I've known is fast and faster
But here I see an alternative pace to life
            in which things are still accomplished
            and the world doesn't grind to a halt

How odd
How healthy

S l o w

                Carne

Favourites

28 May 2014

When we were young, we spoke of favourites.

Favourite colour. Favourite food. Favourite teacher.

I´m not sure what happened to favourites as we grew up, but they dont seem to feature much in conversation now.

Ive been in South America two weeks now, and oh the multitude of things I've seen and done!
Crossing the Andes. Asados. Mustering heifers on horseback. The Teatro Colon. Caminito St, its colour and tango. Folklore. Iguazu falls.

But if I had to pick a favourite, it'd be this: español.
I can't explain how or why its so fun - it just is.

And my favourite word: vaquillona*  Get a native to speak it for you. How pretty!

It's not that Spanish is the most beautiful language in the world (though some may argue so) - its just that it's a language - and languages stir me - I can't describe how or why - they just do.

Almost makes me wonder if, in another life, I might have been a linguist.
Almost makes me thank God for the tower of Babel.

Like the world of biology, the world of language fascinates me. Who created Spanish? Who designed its verb conjugations? Who determined it's gendered nouns and accents? I marvel.

And its not that  Spanish-as-a-second-language is without its frustrations. But in moments of mis(non!)communication, there is often warmth, laughter, creativity (..charades and sounds..), grace and an understanding of a different kind.

I guess its kind of odd to take such delight in a language - it a word - but the fact that one can - and does - is... well... nice, isn´t  it?

*heifer

                 
Favoritos 

Cuando estabamos jovenes, hablabamos sobre las cosas favoritas. Mi color favorito. Mi comida favorita. Mis maestro favorito. Pero ahora, no hablamos asi. 

Estoy en sudamerica hace dos semanas ahora y ya vi y hice mucho. Pero mi cosa favorita esta español. Y mi palabra favorita esta vaquillona. No se porque lo me gusta tanto. Me encanta los idiomas. Pienso que, en una otra vida, me gustaria ser una linguista. Siempre pienso asi: ¿quien crea español? ¿Quien hacia las reglas de gramatica? 

No es facile siempre. Pero cuando no se puede comunicar con palabras...se usa los manos, o los sonidos, las sonrisas - se comunica con otras formas. 

Mi español no esta bueno. Pero me gusta, si lo me gusta. 

Vaquillonas

To be a tourist

Tourists. We hate them and we love them. We scorn them yet we need them. And what of the Christian tourist?

A tourist is a consumer. I like being a consumer. Or at least I can’t help being one – and neither can you. As a tourist, I am primarily a consumer. And…that’s OK!

Isn’t it?

Markets are driven by consumers. Whole economies are based on tourism. And just like ‘global trade lifts millions of people out of poverty’¹, so too can tourism stimulate a healthy wealth spiral.

And sure, it’s not all sunshine and rainbows. If the terms ‘responsible tourism’ and ‘ecotourism’, have been coined, then the converse must exist also. Dodgy tour guides, horrible hotels and governments that will misspend money - yes, they’re around. But that shouldn't stop you travelling – just like bad farming should not make you vegetarian. As I tour, and spend, I’d hope that some of my taxi fare and airport taxes would go into feeding some honest, hardworking father and his family (God bless them). And then, not only would I have consumed, but contributed.

Sometimes we are so caught up in being a hero, doing something daring, something great – for the sports team/school/community/God  -  and please, go ahead! we need more who will do so. But then I think there is an equal need for ordinary people – ordinary Christians – to do ordinary things, with the big picture in mind. Aware of how the world – our world – works: what makes it spin (money does make the world go round), and how we contribute – for better or for worse. 

The responsible, eco tourist is in a great position to live this out, and, with God’s grace, this is what I intend to do.

¹Mark Powell, CEO The Warehouse Group  

A divide?

6months in South America. Three months travel, then three months mission work. Though I (nor you) must not be tempted to think that the former is the ‘fun’ part and the latter the ‘helping’ ‘charity’ ‘good work’ part. No more than we should divide our lives into secular and spiritual, time for me and time for God, pocket money vs tithe – you get the idea.

I guess it’s easy to see how volunteer vet work helps people (and animals…). But being a tourist? Well, I spend money. The exchange of money is always welcomed (by the receiver, as least). I also join this group of people (aka needy backpackers) who request services, thus creating a demand for quality services, business opportunities, and inputting into the local – and global – economy.

Cool.

Just think – if nobody – travelled, there’d be no taxi drivers, tour buses, customs officials, travel insurance, suitcase sellers – not that their existence is a reason to travel (any more than the existence of vets is a reason to own a pet¹). But that those of us who can/choose to/delight in travel (aka needy backpackers)– well, good on us, we help the world go round, it needs folk like us too.

¹but if you are petless… and have the means… please do! 

Good posts that get me excited...

http://emilybutterfield.theworldrace.org/?filename=intimacy-is-my-theme-song

http://blogsbychristianwomen.blogspot.co.nz/2013/07/closer-to-god-through-travel.html

One month to go

25/3/14 – journal entry

One month to go. And so many things to be done in it (or… in life in general…if you are a Fan). As I run around (or..sit and journal right now…) organising flights, emailing across the oceans, buying insurance and earplugs, I think, ‘how do I do this in light of who God is? In light of what Christ has done? How do I travel as a Christian? How do I make travel prep as a Christian? (in fact, how should one do anything as a Christian  - work, play, eat, sleep…?)

Do I do it with much prayer? I pray for the mission work – but what about the rest? Do I plan with the disclaimer that in the end the Lord determines my steps? Do I drool over Google maps in awe of the vast Creator? Do I ask for wisdom in making credit card purchases? Do I thank Him every moment for the opportunity, the intellect, the heart to travel? Do I marvel that, through the cross, every corner of life is now brought under his love and lordship?

Yes so much to be done,  but also much to be thought through and thankful for  - let’s not forget this now. 

Travel time

8 May 2014

So, with four years of work under my belt, its time to travel again.

‘how does it feel to be unemployed?’ my sister asked. How crude, I thought. She’s just jealous

Its not that I’m sick of work – on the contrary! But even four years of exhilarating (no kidding – you should try it!) country vetting couldn’t prevent recrudescence of this travel bug.  And with it (I hope!) comes the resurrection of this blog.

Me being me, needs good reasons for doing anything in life –  and ‘just cos’ doesn’t quite make the cut. Four years ago I thought (and blogged) hard as to why I wanted to travel:

If ‘the world is the LORD’s and all who live in it’, can He be learnt of from other people (irrespective of their religion), observing their way of life? Can travel and everything it involves grow me as a disciple? I suspect yes; I go to find out.

Thus I travel to find God ‘over there’, to seek him in contexts I’ve never seen Him in before. I don’t want to be a Christian that forever sees God in only church, ministry, bible studies and Hillsong music.’ 1 

And to these, on a run out to Red Rocks today, I add more thoughts: 

God created to the world – nay, the universe – for us to explore and enjoy. But as to how, He didn’t specify. And so coffee in the city, going bush with beef jerky, scanning 500 cows at 5am, snapping selfies  with the Taj Mahal, or creating glorious diabetes-inducing desserts – can all be done to the praise of God. Each to his own, and all according to his means and genes.

I’m convinced this passion for travel, for cultures, for people, for life – in both its splendour and pain – is given from above. And from the blessings of country vetting (employment is a blessing, people!) I have the means. So I pack my pack and off I go, for the glory of God.

Yes, anything (travel included) that induces you (and even better – others!) to praise the Creator is a worthy endeavour. 

1 Posts Jan 2010 

Acts of God?

Feb '11

Acts of God - you know: Earthquakes, tsunamis, floods, avalanches...natural disasters out of our control. Funny how we call them 'Acts of God', as if God were out to destroy things.

Why don't we call them 'Acts of the Devil?'

And wonders such as

childbirth,

water-colour sunsets,

coral reefs,

blossoming roses

- what do we call these? 'Miracles', at best, attributable to any deity*.

Seems like we're forever after someone to blame - and if no one else, God fits the bill. Yet if we lived our lives on the lookout for someone to praise, we'd find He fits the bill a whole lot better....

*Papatuanuku, if you like

I like my job

I like my job. I really do.

Day 1:
I arrive half an hour late. Hey, it wasn’t my fault. John(1) and I were watching the soccer. We left the house when the extra time began. I couldn’t leave before my boss could I?
Also, I’d parked my car under some trees overnight and was quite pleased to find it hadn’t frosted over. It was -5degC in the morning when I set off at 8.30am, but a clear, crisp day. Driving at 100km down the gravel road, somebody smart decided to clean their windscreen with the squirty water and wiper function. That somebody suddenly found that whilst she could still see past the dirt on the glass before, she now could not see through the thin layer of ice that immediately formed. Pulling over, she smartly tried to pour over more water from her drink bottle to get it off (may I point out that this smart somebody managed to pass vet school)…and ended up scraping it off with a bit of tissue.
That’s also partly why I ended up late. No one cared though; I was welcomed with open arms.

Day 2:
I was late again, but that wasn’t my fault either – blame my chauffer. I noticed the linemen working outside out clinic.
Natasha(2) burst into the treatment room. ‘Guys, the power’s going to be turned off today at 9!’
We looked at the clock; it was 9.10am.
Oh no, what are we going to do? Can we do a bitch spay with no power? The dog will freeze! What about the patients already here for treatment? How will I toast my bagel for lunch? (that was the somebody smart)
Before we could do anything, there was a click. And the lights, computers, heaters – not the heaters!! – were all gone. We’re going to freeze, we’re going to freeze, we all cried, donning beanies, gloves, scarves and hoods. Like a bunch of eskimoes, Craig(3) commented. Excuse me? We are vets thankyou very much.
Lets do zuumba to keep warm, Ive got the DVD at home. How will we watch it? I’ll bring my lap top. We could move the clinic to your house for the day.
Hayley(4) ran to fill hot water bottles for the dogs. Natasha returned dancing round with a headtorch. This is for using when in the toilet.
I spent most of the day out on farms. Wasn’t exactly much warmer, but at least we were outside in the freezing sunshine. And got sweaty searching for a cow that was apparently ‘sitting down by the gate’ of a big (I mean big) paddock. The farmer wasn’t around, and neither, to our knowledge, was the cow. But there were trees, dead logs, an old car, a stream, lots of mud and many overgrown blackberry bushes. Ouch.
Do you charge a visit fee for something like that?

Day 3: I would’ve been on time, had I factored in the 10 minutes needed to back my new work vehicle down the driveway and out the gate. It’s slightly bigger than my baby corolla (and doesn’t have a tennis ball on the towbar).
Today I actually felt useful. There was power, and there were animals to attend to. At 2pm I took over a dental from poor Sarah(5) who had not had lunch and was already late to see an injured horse. I extracted no less than 6 teeth from this dog’s mouth, brushed the remaining ones, then stitched up a wound on the leg of a greyhound (who showed no intentions of waking up from his anaesthetic even at 5.30pm - thus I was not only late to work but late leaving too).

Day 4: My first day punctual. So early, in fact, that no other vets had arrived yet. It was a beautiful iceblock of a day again, and I walked across the crunchy grass to take photos of the newborn lambs in the adjacent paddock. Hayley, suspicious of this hooded figure sneaking round the building, stuck her head out the smoko room. ‘Good morning!’ I greeted. ‘I am your resident Asian tourist’.
Hayley had half the day off, and bid us goodbye at 12pm. There are some people you miss, and there are some you really miss. Picture four of us standing around the anaesthetic machine trying to work out which bits go where. And manually polishing a dog’s teeth because we couldn’t get the electric equipment going.
That night I was already in my PJs when the phone rang. It was John, enquiring about Fido (not his real name), a dog who had had surgery that morning. His owner had called, saying he was agitated and not happy. Since they lived less than 2 mins around the corner from me, I said I could go and attend to him. Thus I did my 1st after hours call, without actually being on call. Somewhat exciting, I thought, as I got back into my PJs.

Day 5: Had my 1st patient die. Well, technically Fido wasn’t my patient as I hadn’t been the one to operate on him; nevertheless I had been the last vet to see him before he passed on in the night. Though we now know it was the fault of the tumour he'd had, its not a good look for a new (or any) vet.
Sarah got called to see another horse, and was out of a drug that I knew I had in the back of my truck. The problem was I couldn’t get into the back of my truck. The frozen locks gave the keys grief. Once unlocked I find the whole window – hinges and all – frozen solid, even with water poured over. Yes, I can assure you that work vehicles are very safe places to keep drugs. Sarah managed without.
‘Just to let you know’, said Annabel(6) (who I’d inherited this beast off) later that day, 'your euthanasia equipment is in the glove box’. Cheers, I said. It wasn’t until driving home that night that I realised the glove box was where I’d stored all my muesli bars and other emergency food…

So, even without consuming her drug-contaminated emergency food, it was a very sleepy somebody that climbed into bed that night. A very sleepy somebody who fell asleep thinking
I like my job. I really do.

References:
1. Boss, whose family I stayed the 1st night with.
2. Receptionist
3. Practice manager
4. Vet nurse
5. Fellow vet
6. Fellow vet

Sachsenhausen part 2: Faith on trial

It changes things a bit, you know, having been to places like this.
Such atrocities contrived, carried out, gotten away with. I have to admit, it does challenge my faith.

Somehow, the emotive worship songs and psalms of praise seem a bit superficial; a bit detatched from this reality. I mean, its not like you’d go up to a prisoner on the way to the gas chamber and say ‘sing to the Lord a new song…His love endures forever..’ and then run off back to church. Its not that I don’t believe its true. I think it just takes a bit of thought to form convictions as to why its still true, in the face of suffering. And for that, we must get back to basics:

The existence of suffering and God are not mutually exclusive. The reason for human suffering can be traced back to the fall; a consequence of sin that is in all of us. What I can’t tell you is why God allows suffering such as Sachsenhausen. But I know I don’t know everything, so trust He has His reasons.

And its not like He doesn’t do anything about suffering. On the contrary, He gave everything to solve the problem. For God see’s things a bit differently to us – which is no surprise since, after all, He is God and we are not. Its not that He is blind to human anguish – on the contrary He is most fully aware. Its just that He knows that the worst anguish is found not in concentration camps but in Hell, separated from His goodness, under His holy wrath. But what if I don’t believe in Hell? You ask. There are those that deny the Holocaust too.

Ok,to be fair, we know the suffering of war. And sure we wont find history books or survivor stories from Hell. But the result is that we ask why God doesn’t do something about suffering on earth rather than why doesn’t He do something about the eternal suffering to come. And if we did ask the latter, we’d realise that he already has. Thus giving at least hope (if not an explanation) for the suffering on earth now.

And that changes things.

Sachsenhausen

19 April 2010, Germany.

I went to a former WWII concentration camp yesterday. ‘How was it?’ you ask. Im not sure what to answer.
Sobering. Sickening. Anger-inciting.Unbelievable.
It was a labour camp, as opposed to a death camp, so never designed for mass murder. Still, tens of thousands lost their lives there;its still mass murder to me.

We walked through the main gates: ‘Work makes you free’, it said.
We saw the barracks that housed up to 400 people at a time. People would just die on the toilet floors covered in excretement.
We saw the electric barbed wire fence, which many a prisoner, losing all hope and courage, ran into: suicide.
We saw the running track, where prisoners would run around and around, to test out army boots made by fellow prisoners at the factories. Sometimes they carried sacks of sand and ran, up to 70km a day, day after day.
We saw the prison (even though the whole camp was a prison) where inmates were subject to years of solitary confinement , torture and interrogation. Two British officers were chained to the centre of a concrete cell in darkness for 5 years. At the end they were transferred to another camp and then shot.
We saw the pathology building where prisoners with medical training would carry out autopsies. Often they would contract fatal Typhus or other infectious diseases from the corpses in the process. We didn’t have time (nor the guts) to see the infirmary where medical experiments, forced castration and racial research was carried out.

Even more disturbing to hear about was the relationship of the surrounding community to the camp. We read about the SS guards attending dances and social events, acting like ordinary family men. The townspeople would see the emaciated prisoners marching to and from work each day – was just a normal sight. A fine layer of ash would settle over the town when the corpse burning began to increase - did they not stop to wonder? One commander of the camp had been a church elder. Imagine! He let a pastor from town minister to a Bishop who was an inmate. And what did that Pastor think about it all?

I walked through that place thinking ‘God, where are you in all of this?’ I'll bet im not the only one to have wondered. ‘Seeing this is one of the reasons I cannot believe in God’, Michael told me as we walked back to the car. I understand what he means.
This camp by no means proves God - But I still believe in one. Many look at think 'There must be no god'. I look at it and think ‘There must be a God’, because if there’s not, and this is the state of human beings, then we are all doomed.

What God did and didnt say

I attended the Lutheran service at the Berliner Dome last Sunday. It was rather elaborate and traditional. What does God think of all this, I wondered...

Well, God never told us to build big churches with tall steeples. He never said to hang up paintings of Jesus or install stained glass windows. He never suggested we light candles, have wooden pews or a crucifix on the front wall. He didnt require and organ to accompany hymns (or a worship band either, for that matter).

But He did command us to love Him first and foremost. Then to love each other deeply, serve our neighbours and our enemies. To be patient and humble. To uphold justice and defend the cause of the fatherless. To be joyful always, to devote ourselves to prayer, to be filled with thanksgiving.To train up our children in His ways, to preach the word, to take the bread and wine in remembrance of Him. To be still and konw that He is God.

And so, I guess, whatever helps with (and doesnt distract from) any of the above, I'm OK with (and think He is too)

Good to be back

I'm back in the West - The wild wild West.

Where traffic is civilised and crossing the road isn't short of suicide
Where rubbish is found in rubbish bins and houses aren't grilled up
Where dogs are on leashes and cats, too, have owners
Where the price printed is the price paid
Where busses run on schedules (or heck, there exists a schedule),
appointments are made and appointments are kept.

Its not that I didnt like the East or that I couldnt live there.
Just noticed that, though Im still on the other side of the world,
Its nice to be back.